In the world of animation, there are several “rules” that make good animation. One of them is “anticipation,” which sets up a scene so that events happen in a manner that the audience can understand. In order to avoid cliches, animators twist situations by setting up an obvious scenario and then delivering something completely unexpected instead. And with the medium they are using, animators are able to imagine all sorts of impossible scenarios. These often lead to silly exaggerations that bend the laws of physics, making most animated films comedic by nature. Dreamworks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda is no exception to this - a martial arts film centered around a fat, talking panda, there are numerous exaggerations to push the believability of the characters and their fictional environment. However, what is unique is that this film pushes the laws of physics for comedic effect just as much as it does for dramatic effect. This creates a nice blend of both action and comedy, showing how animation’s exaggerated effects can be used for more than just goofy intentions. Kung Fu Panda’s stylized animation pushes and breaks the laws of physics to emphasize comedic situations as well as enhance dramatic action sequences.
The exaggerations of animation tend to create silly, humorous situations where the limits of reality are broken for the sake of comedy. In Kung Fu Panda, the characters consist of talking animals. Although this seems silly already, the believability of their personalities and actions make them seem like real humans. One way that animators turn their drawn characters into believable individuals is through exaggeration - they make the audience understand clearly the goals of each character. The main character of the film, Po, is a fat panda whose fattiness is greatly exaggerated by how he interacts with the environment around him. In one scene of the movie, Po tries to get into an event revealing the identity of the Dragon Warrior. During one of his many attempts to get over the stone wall, Po attempts to jump over using a bamboo stick for support.
Of course, the thin stick cannot support his hefty weight. In the scene, the stick curls under his weight as if made from an elastic material. Then, instead of snapping under his weight, the stick launches Po straight into the stone wall. Obviously, a mere bamboo stick would not have enough energy to do that in reality. However, the audience accepts the gag of a character wanting something really bad, bad enough to devise absurd situations that get them hurt in the process. And because they accept the joke, they accept the broken laws of physics. In another attempt, Po creates a crude trebuchet with a tree and some rope.
Instead of launching him over the wall, however, the tree merely bends nearly to snapping point under Po’s weight before bouncing up and back down with enough force to slap Po. A real tree, of course, cannot bend like that but the absurdity is accepted because of the comedic level of the scene. In Po’s final attempt to get over the wall, he attaches himself to a seat loaded with firecrackers on the bottom (likely a reference to Chinese legends of a man trying to launch himself into outer space in that exact fashion). The firecrackers end up propelling Po against the wall, causing him to scrape his face along the stone. Instead of doing any actual bloody damage, the animators stretch and squish Po’s face so that he is able to endure having his face dragged across like that.
Po continually gets hurt throughout the movie, such as when he gets stuck attempting to do the splits and has to have Crane pull him off (despite Crane being a bird and Po being a panda) and when he falls into the Furious Five’s training grounds and is repeatedly pummeled by all the equipment (and instead of getting hurt in any serious way, he merely bounces around like a rubber ball). All of these exaggerations to the characters and to the environment around them create comical, absurd situations that are accepted by viewers because it enhances the light-hearted mood of the story.
Kung Fu Panda, as the title suggests, is also largely an action movie. The legendary Furious Five in the film depict the five strongest warriors in all of the land - warriors whose strengths are exemplified ten times as much as physically possible. There are dozens of fight sequences littered throughout the film that all showcase the amount of martial arts research that the animators went through - not only real martial arts being practiced today, but also that of martial arts’ depiction in classic kung fu films. In many scenes, characters release an unimaginable amount of force with little to no recoil. An example of this is the power demonstrated by the movie’s main villain, a snow leopard named Tai Lung. Introducing him is a scene in which he escapes an inescapable prison, which showcases just how powerful he is. Tai Lung is chained to two large boulders, which he manages to effortlessly pull up and swing without any recoil in his body. Even if it were humanly possible for someone to swing a heavy boulder of that size, there would at least be a bit of recoil for the amount of energy exerted. Instead, Tai Lung is so powerful that he does not even have to move anywhere from his position to pull the boulders. Later in that same scene, Tai Lung grabs a chain and swings himself under and over a bridge.
Although very theatrical, it would have been physically impossible for Tai Lung to have enough energy to swing the chain all the way around the bridge especially since all he did to gain momentum was leap off the edge and grab the chain on his way down. Like Po, the environment around Tai Lung bends to exaggerate his physique. Tai Lung leaps from giant arrow to giant arrow to bounce himself up the sides of the cliff - the arrows, despite being solid wood, bend easily under Tai Lung’s weight.
Although physically impossible, the scene is acceptable because it showcases Tai Lung’s impossible strength. Throughout the movie are also contrasts to highlight the characters’ agility. When Tai Lung is first escaping, he throws several arrows in the air. They seem suspended in the air momentarily before Tai Lung kicks them all away.
Realistically, as soon as the second arrow was kicked up, the first arrow should have begun to fall but instead they all stayed afloat in the air. In another scene, Shifu throws a peach into the air and leaps up to cut it. He moves very quickly, propelling himself into the air after the peach, cutting it, and then propelling himself back down to the ground just in time to catch the falling peach. In reality, it would have been impossible for Shifu to land on the ground before the peach since everything is pulled down with equal gravitational force. However, the contrast of the peach being thrown up and falling down at normal speed while Shifu moves through the air with lightning speed helps to accentuate his incredible speed. Characters throughout the movie are shown to have an impossible amount of strength and ability, being able to move faster than gravity would normally allow and forcing objects to bend against the rules of physics for their whims. Although this level of power is absolutely impossible to achieve in real life, the audience accepts this surreality because it enhances the drama of the movie and highlights how all the powerful characters are much stronger than normal.
Kung Fu Panda picks up dramatic pace when Po begins his actual training as a dragon warrior, after discovering that some of his natural habits are actually capable of becoming honed into martial arts skills. In the beginning of the movie, Po’s father throws him several bowls of noodle soup which Po manages to catch and balance all along his arm.
At first glance, Po’s cartoonish ability to balance so many bowls of noodles is a comedic gag but his ability to balance something like that is later shown to be a skill required for martial arts. Although it is likely physically impossible for anyone to catch bowls of steaming, hot noodle soup all along the entirety of their arm in less than three seconds, the scene is accepted in the film. Later, Shifu discovers Po’s natural talent when he catches Po rummaging expertly through the kitchen for food. Despite his weight being such a burden throughout the film, Po is suddenly bounding up cupboards as if he were a nimble creature. The reasoning for this in the film is that Po is able to summon an inner energy when he goes after what he really wants - which, in this case, is food. Realistically, of course, an individual of that girth would have difficulty leaping up shelves without having their weight bring them down. In the final battle of the movie, Po and Tai Lung are face-to-face in combat. The gag of Po’s thick girth makes a return when Tai Lung throws his powerful attacks on the panda only to have them absorbed by Po’s fat.
In this scene, Po’s entire body stretches and morphs into another material entirely. Realistically, no amount of cushion should be able to deflect a force that was able to lift up several boulders. However, in this case Po’s thickness is further exaggerated over Tai Lung’s attacks. He is so thick that he can absorb any attack without any recoil or pain. In fact, after several more attempts from Tai Lung, the villain’s punches bounce right off of Po’s strange body and all the energy is exerted back and throws him several meters away. With this newfound power in his body, which destroys all the laws of physics, Po is able to defeat Tai Lung with his natural ability. The movie is able to tie together its comedic and dramatic exaggerations into a single character - Po the panda. This creates a fresh look on animated films and how, as a medium, it is able to break the laws of physics in unique ways to capture more than just one type of mood.
Martial arts films are arguably one of the best types of movies to look for when looking for great exaggerations that break the laws of physics while still attempting to keep some believability for how objects react to characters' enhanced powers. Kung Fu Panda being an animated movie manages to keep a comedic tone throughout the movie while showcasing the unimaginable forces that is the film's characters. The movie combines action and comedy to tell a strong, heartfelt story and uses the medium of animation to make every scene as clear and understandable as possible.
Note: I somewhat deviated from my original outline in that I wanted to organize the types of exaggerations in the movie by genre. I first went for the sequences that made the movie seem silly and comedic, then for the scenes that enhanced the martial arts for dramatic effect, and finally to the scenes that combined both comedy and action to tie the entire movie together.
